Vaux Band Plays 'Meaty' Music

Rumor has it that Bert and Ernie are working on a new musical hit called “Sesame Street” for two guitars—Associate Professor of Linguistics Bert Vaux and Harvard Medical School Instructor Ernie-Paul Barrete of the Redundant Steaks rock band, that is.

Vaux first started playing electric bass in middle school, but quickly progressed to more exotic musical endeavors. He now plays guitar for the Redundant Steaks, a band he started with Barrete and two other friends while they were undergraduates at the University of Chicago.

“Ribeye,” “Buttersteak,” “Buttsteak,” and “Cubesteak”—whose real names are Doug, Jon, Bert and Ernie, respectively—began their collaboration as the Redundant Steaks in the “Pit Stop,” the University of Chicago’s student snack bar and lounge.

“We generated the name randomly,” Vaux says. But it stuck, and the group still plays together 14 years later.

“The titles of our songs were also picked randomly, and then we tried to create lyrics to explain them,” he says.

And it does seem that way. the Redundant Steaks have released five albums: Liquid Dwarf, Rusty Dwarf, Buster Crabbe: The Rock Opera, Columbian Inventions, Chopped Steaks and Petrified Barbecue.

But the band’s creativity goes beyond randomly generated song titles and funky time signatures. Vaux wrote in an e-mail that he has also composed a piece “in an unusual open tuning,” playing open string on his guitar.

And the group’s music is diverse, stemming from folk, pop and country traditions.

“We like to play different genres,” Vaux says. One such piece is a pseudo-rap titled “We Are Dainty Little Fairies,” based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical, Iolanthe.

The Redundant Steaks’ website offers clips of their music and excerpts from reviews of their first recording, Liquid Dwarf, Rusty Dwarf (LDRD).

“The most remarkable thing about LDRD,” they write on their website, “is that the Steaks were able to contrive its jarring musical insanity without the benefit of alcohol or illicit substances.”

After a highly-publicized battle with Harvard over being denied tenure, Vaux will soon head West to accept a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin.

But, he says, the Redundant Steaks will likely live on. Right now the group does most of their correspondence and planning electronically. They send MP3’s and digital recordings to each other and meet in Washington, D.C. once a year, according to Vaux.

Currently Vaux is working on a Greek opera based on material from epic poets.

“I enjoy trying to set music to certain poetic meters found in Greek and Sanskrit that are in odd times,” he says.

Despite his musical talents, Vaux says he won’t be leaving the Ivory Tower for Tower Records any time soon.

“Being a professor is the ideal career,” Vaux says. “The rewards of working with students, thinking about things you’re interested in, and having the freedom to play music, sports, and the like…make a professorial career ideal.”